Mississippi authorities work on leads in stripper case

BAY ST. LOUIS — Hancock County, Miss., investigators are still following up on leads and waiting for forensics results in the death of a French Quarter dancer who was gruesomely slaughtered in June.

Jaren Lockhart went missing on June 6 after leaving work at Temptations Gentlemen’s Club on Bourbon Street.

Hancock County Chief Deputy Don Bass tells the Sea Coast Echo that authorities are waiting the results from more forensics evidence handed over to the FBI in early December.

Days after Lockhart went missing, her severed body parts washed ashore in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Two people were detained — 28-year-old Margaret Sanchez and 39-year-old Terry Speaks. However, no formal charges in Lockhart’s death were made against the couple.

Speaks was eventually extradited to North Carolina where he was sentenced in December to two years and eight months in prison for failure to register as a sex offender. The charge was unrelated to Lockhart’s death.

Sanchez was held at the Tangipahoa Parish jail until Aug. 10, when she was released because a prosecutor determined she could not be held on her initial charge.

“We have some more forensics evidence we submitted to the FBI lab, that’s from (Speaks and Sanchez’s) car,” Bass said.

“We’re still kind of at their mercy. … They keep telling us they will have something for us soon. We’re hoping by the first of the year, we’ll start getting something back.”